Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. (December 2, 1924–February 20, 2010) was a retired United States Army general who served as the United States Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In 1973 Haig served as Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the number-two ranking officer in the Army. Haig served as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, commanding all U.S. and NATO forces in Europe.

Haig, a veteran of the Korean War and Vietnam War, was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star with oak leaf cluster, and the Purple Heart.

On February 20, 2010 news reports indicated that Haig had died from complications from an infection after being hospitalized since January 28 in critical condition at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Though, like with other people who die, this obviously is a sad day for the relatives and friends of Alexander Haig, this should not lead to any concessions to the Rightist militarist policies which Haig stood for.

On the contrary, one should hope that now when NATO‘s ex Commander has died, the aggressive and expensive NATO alliance itself will die soon.

Alexander Haig was a trailblazer for a modern reactionary type, the political general, who crosses over from the uniformed military to high political office. Haig played a central role during two critical periods for American imperialism: as Nixon’s White House chief of staff in 1973-74, and Reagan’s secretary of state in 1981-82: here.

Chomsky is trying to rescue crimes from the memory-hole, so we can remember them. In his new book, for example, he explains that Ronald Reagan — the great hero of the American right — was a champion of jihadism: here.

I’ll never know for sure, but it’s possible that I was once on, ahem, extremely intimate terms with W. Mark Felt, the leak artist formerly known as Deep Throat who has now passed away.

Journalists and many others lionizing the former FBI official — rightly — for his contribution in helping to bring down Richard Nixon, should not overlook the fact that Felt was one of the architects of the bureau’s notorious COINTELPRO domestic spying-and-burglary campaign. He was convicted in 1980 of authorizing nine illegal entries in New Jersey in 1972 and 1973 — the very period during which he was famously meeting Bob Woodward in a parking garage. Only a pardon, courtesy of Ronald Reagan, kept him out of jail for a long term.

So the man knew a thing or two about illegal break-ins. COINTELPRO was the Patriot Act on steroids. And that’s where I come in.